Palo Alto, Comcast dispute Internet fees Palo Alto Issues, posted by Editor, Palo Alto Online, on Nov 27, 2009 at 11:19 am
Palo Alto and its neighbors on the Peninsula are scrambling to keep affordable high-speed Internet in place at schools, city halls and other public facilities after Comcast has proposed to drastically raise service fees next summer.
Read the full story here Web Link posted Friday, November 27, 2009, 8:45 AM
Posted by Wants-To-Know, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Nov 27, 2009 at 11:19 am
A few years back, the City of Palo Alto get involved with Comcast over the completion of the I-NET function. Comcast settled this action with a one-time payment of $750,000. The details of the settlement were never quite made public. The Weekly's article makes no mention of this almost $1M transfer from Comcast to the City.
So .. where has this money gone? And why doesn't the Weekly want to include this money in the overview of any continuing Comcast/I-Net issues.
Posted by mutti, a resident of the Adobe-Meadows neighborhood, on Nov 27, 2009 at 1:10 pm
I work for Ravenswood School District in East Palo Alto, and have known about this looming problem for some months. We recently received an amazing grant from Hewlett Packard to upgrade our very old server structure, but the design requires the fiber between the school sites and the district office. Also, with the help of Cisco we upgraded our phone system last year from an OS-2 (early 1990's) based system to modern VOIP. Losing the I-net will also make that system almost unusable, and send us back to regular telephone lines---which don't work at all in rainstorms.
The underlying problem is yet another money-power grab by the State of California. They decided the cable franchise fees could go to the state, and not be negotiated by and paid to local cities. This is just the unintended consequence of that state grab. Unintended, but devistating to schools.
And this will be the hardest on the schools. School budgets are being hurt the worst, and school districts have more sites that need high bandwidth. All of the new curricula include on-line video. Streaming video to many classrooms of 30 kids on laptops doesn't work over T-1 lines.
Posted by Monopolies SUCK, a resident of the Greenmeadow neighborhood, on Nov 27, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Yet another case of a huge company caring only about its bottom line, and emphatically NOT caring about who is hurt along the way. Nice, Comcast, very nice. This country is now built on the "I'm grabbing the best for me and I don't care what that does to you" unfettered credo of greed. *sigh*
Posted by marty, a resident of the College Terrace neighborhood, on Nov 27, 2009 at 5:08 pm
What we need is more competition between providers. We also need the state govt. to take their greedy hands out of this. As usual, it's kids and schools who'll suffer. Only in America.
As far as Comcast and other providers are concerned, each time rates go up, I cut back on my choices. Soon, I'll have none left. I doubt I'll miss it much.
Isn't this an arm's length price negotiation between a willing byer and a willing seller, both with hundreds of millions of dollars of assets and income, Comcast, the City, and the school district?
Years ago, many of us recommended the City BUY the Cable Coop, they chose not to, and let ATT take the risk (and reward!)
The school district or city can build and fund whatever they want.
Why should cities and schools get for free or for reduced rates what we all have to pay market prices AND excessive taxes for?
Competition is good; high profits invite investment and competition, creating unexpected new technologies and cheaper alternatives, driving prices down to costs, and driving profits down towards zero. Airlines, anyone? A dozen other examples?
Posted by Wants-To-Know, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Nov 29, 2009 at 1:41 pm
> Why should cities and schools get for free or for reduced rates
> what we all have to pay market prices AND excessive taxes for?
This is an excellent point. While the Weekly article does say is that the cost of the I-NET is hidden in the fees paid by the individual cable subscriber, what is not discussed is the long term cost of maintenance of the system. It would be impossible for a non-technical person, such as anyone in the Department of Finance, to make claims that the system costs have been "recouped".
In addition to the "infrastructure" necessary to link the various nodes of the I-NET "members", there is also Internet access fees that have to be paid. Actually maintenance costs for running the I-NET were not supposed to fall on the Cable vendors. Many of the schools have for a long time chosen to purchase a small amount of bandwidth, and so their monthly costs were not that great. Along comes optical service with its up-to-a-terabyte-per-second speeds, and along comes costs that are significantly greater.
The I-NET requirement is for Comcast to provide the termination equipment, but this must be replaced ever so often (at least 5-7 years), and no piece of equipment works that only without have component failures along the way. It's a shame that the City of Palo Alto people interviewed in this article are so unaware of network issues.
The original I-NET idea seems to ignore the basics of Internet technology. It's time to put the I-NET to bed and let the Internet do the job it is more than able to do.
Schools also need to hire competent technology people, and begin to fund their own technology needs, rather than trying to hide them via schemes like I-NET.
Posted by aw, a resident of the Old Palo Alto neighborhood, on Nov 29, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Under federal law there's a program call e-Rate that gives school reduced internet rates. The discount can be as much as 80% off standard rates.
To amplify Wants-to-know's point, it would be a shame if the I-net community built out essential applications that can't run over conventional ISP services. Not sure we have enough information yet to say what the next step should be, but hope it's not trenching new fibers to all the schools.
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